32 oz, 15 tablespoons, Peruvian, Dark Blend, Burr Ground, French Press

A hair too strong.

“I call therefore a complete and generous education that which fits a man to perform justly, skilfully and magnanimously, all the offices both public and private, of peace and war.”

John Milton, 1659

Abbott, John, Prue Leith, and Heather MacTaggart. Overschooled but Undereducated: How the Crisis in Education Is Jeopardizing Our Adolescents. (London: Continuum, 2010), 233.

We had an energy assessment today from Magrann Associates. Very thorough, if a bit depressing in terms of the sheer amount of work that needs to be done.

Blower door (picture blow) gave a number of 6,105 cfm. Uh-oh.

My students had an eye-opening moment the other day when they looked at the comments on the Philadelphia Inquirer’s site. Comments there are consistently vitriolic, generally offensive, and occasionally funny.

One thought, if they made me king of all media: each article would have two sets of comments, one from named, registered folks where a reasonable effort was made to verify their identity, followed by a second section of comments for anonymous users. There is a place for reasoned debate but I’ve not found any place where allowing anonymous comments has produced anything but bile. And this way people could chose which section they want to read.

1. Heard this quoted for the first time yesterday, this amazing pacifist proclamation:

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

2. Which reminded me of this Bob Dylan, sung by Tom Petty:

1. Sweet Olive (grown by Quality Greenhouse, sold by Greensgrow)

2. Lizzano (grown by Quality Greenhouse, sold by Greensgrow) May be more of a container plant but going to try with stake.

3. Mini Charm (grown by Quality Greenhouse, sold by Greensgrow)

4. Black Cherry (one of Mary’s Picks from Greensgrow)

5. Garden Peach (another of Mary’s Picks from Greensgrow)

6. Cherry Roma (starting from seed, seed from Seed Savers)

7. Mexican Midget (also from seed, seed from Seed Savers)

I don’t read the editorial page enough to know if this writer would normally get under my skin, but I loved this editorial.

She (his mother) wasn’t just teaching school lessons but life lessons. For her, it was about more than facts and figures. It was about the love of learning and the love of self. It was the great entangle, education in the grandest frame, what sticks with you when all else falls away. As Albert Einstein once said: “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”

She showed me what a great teacher looked like: proud, exhausted, underpaid and overjoyed.

Big day of planting:

one row of carrots in front of the basil in the front yard.
one row of radishes in front of the carrots in front of the basil in the front yard.

Kara played little house on the prairie and sprinkled corn down into the side yard. I pushed the seeds 2″ deep and covered with a bit of compost. We’re again looking to try the three sisters so we sprinkled the seeds instead of putting them in rows.

backyard:
*yesterday we made our cantelope mounds; I had one watermelon and and one melon plant from a Lowe’s discount rack that were already in the ground.
*our beans are up. We planted peas today along the same wall and cucumbers on the back wall.
*In the middle bed, we planted our store bought herbs (two basil from Greensgrow and two basil from Lowe’s). I put these in the middle of the bed and we’re going to plant tomatoes along the side (I read somewhere that it’s good to put tomatoes and basil in the same bin.)
*In the right bed, we planted four rows of lettuce: Green Leaf, Arugula, Green Oak Leaf, and the Red Sail.

I’ll try and post some pictures tomorrow.

Stephen King, lots of curses, but thought this paragraph was particularly money; it’s a response to the question of why it’s not enough for rich folks to give money to charity:

What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.

Sunday AM:

I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me…

When I was listening to this, I thought about this song from Bob, about Ruben Carter:

Rubin could take a man out with just one punch
But he never did like to talk about it all that much
It’s my work, he’d say, and I do it for pay
And when it’s over I’d just as soon go on my way
Up to some paradise

When I think about teaching or about the general choices made in my own life, I’ve been lucky (or wise ?) to almost always be doing what it is I want to be doing. I’ve rarely spent much time just gettin’ paid. How do you explain this to your kids or other people’s kids without sounding like a crazed old man?

John 10:11-15